Very interesting what he says here:
NSMB sales are being severely undercut by the lack of new content and the lack of any tech or graphical showcasing. I was hoping that NSMB DS and NSMB Wii would showcase that 2d Mario is viable, and Nintendo would invest more in it. Instead, it has been the opposite. Nintendo is trying to squeeze as much revenue as possible while trying to minimize as much cost as possible. “How can you say that?” Does NSMB 2 DLC ring a bell?
“But shouldn’t all businesses do that?” What is appalling is the hypocrisy coming from Nintendo. 2d Mario, which actually sells and is universally adored, gets this lousy treatment. 3d Mario, which doesn’t sell and is not universally liked, gets an incredible budget that allows orchestrated music, new programming tech, and much money spent on the art. If anything, 3d Mario should be getting the recycled content, the ‘bah bah’ reused music, and replaying Super Mario 64 (which is what most 3d Mario fans want anyway).
Why are these two unequal games in sales, 2d Mario and 3d Mario, being treated as if 3d Mario is the flagship title? It is because there are Nintendo software developers who are more interested in 3d Mario’s success than in Nintendo’s success. If the console sales crashes and burns because of a N64, Gamecube, or 3DS (yes, 3DS is not performing in the West unlike the DS), who cares? So long as they can keep working on their precious 3d Mario, to hell if the company burns. After Mario 64 flopped and delivered the console market to Sony, any professional company would stop making Mario 64 type games. But not Nintendo.
Some readers may be amazed at reading this (because they don’t hear it anywhere else). Nintendo software developers are only written about as if they are ‘little geniuses all’, you rarely ever see them written about as ‘selfish’. Bizarrely, you see Nintendo’s hardware developers written about as if they were ‘stupid’ or ‘bad’ but they do an amazing job concerning their cost range. Everyone forgets the hardware guys are ruled over by the software guys. If you don’t like something with Nintendo hardware, blame the software guys.
If any of this sounds amazing to the reader, consider Sakamoto and his quest to turn Metroid from a game of atmospheric platforming, exploring, and shooting to a game of characters, drama, and ‘the baby‘. Whatever his motivations are, no one should forget that when criticism began to mount, Nintendo tried to blame Team Ninja. But Team Ninja, knowing what was going on, had to come out and say, “Don’t like the story? Blame Sakamoto. That was all his doing.”
There is a perfect correlation of the Game Industry praising Nintendo’s games when they don’t sell. When they do sell, the games are ‘awful’ or ‘not as good as people think’. And we keep hearing much encouragement from industry developers and journalists for Nintendo to keep making those games that didn’t sell. “Keep making that 3d Mario and Skyward Sword.” “Don’t you dare make more 2d Marios or Mario sports games.” “Make more games like Windwaker.” “Don’t you dare make a game like Classic Zelda.” I’m sure Microsoft and Sony love 3d Mario and hope Nintendo pours as much money as they can into it.
